Reading 24
Down through the roof
The reading
Mark 2:1-12
When he entered again into Capernaum after some days, it was heard that he was in the house. Immediately many were gathered together, so that there was no more room, not even around the door; and he spoke the word to them. Four people came, carrying a paralytic to him. When they could not come near to him for the crowd, they removed the roof where he was. When they had broken it up, they let down the mat that the paralytic was lying on. Jesus, seeing their faith, said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven you.”
But there were some of the scribes sitting there, and reasoning in their hearts, “Why does this man speak blasphemies like that? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, said to them, “Why do you reason these things in your hearts? Which is easier, to tell the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven;’ or to say, ‘Arise, and take up your bed, and walk?’ But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (he said to the paralytic), “I tell you, arise, take up your mat, and go to your house.”
He arose, and immediately took up the mat, and went out in front of them all; so that they were all amazed, and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”
The companions
Psalm 103:1-5
Praise the LORD, my soul! All that is within me, praise his holy name! Praise the LORD, my soul, and don’t forget all his benefits; who forgives all your sins; who heals all your diseases; who redeems your life from destruction; who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies; who satisfies your desire with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
Isaiah 35:3-6 (selected)
Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Tell those who have a fearful heart, “Be strong. Don’t be afraid. Behold, your God will come and save you.” Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped. Then the lame man will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute will sing; for waters will break out in the wilderness, and streams in the desert.
The note
Four men destroy a roof. That detail gets softened in the retelling, but somebody owned that house, and now there is a hole in it and rubble on the floor and a teaching session stopped dead.
Mark says Jesus saw their faith. Theirs, the carriers’. The man on the mat says nothing at all in the account.
He is brought, lowered, spoken to, and told to get up. Somebody else’s stubbornness put him in that room.
Then the order surprises everyone. The obvious problem is the legs. Jesus goes first to the thing nobody can inspect, which is exactly why the scribes object. It is an unverifiable claim, and a claim only God can make.
So he makes the verifiable one as evidence. Which is easier to say, he asks, and then settles it by doing the harder thing to fake. The man walks out carrying the mat he was carried in on.
This week
Carry someone this week, and make it inconvenient. Not a message saying you are thinking of them — an actual arrangement. The drive. The form filled in.
The appointment booked and attended with them. Pick a person who genuinely cannot do it themselves right now. The four men in this passage broke a roof they did not own in order to move one friend twenty feet across a room.
Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (public domain). The divine name is rendered “the LORD” in the Psalm.
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